What am I possibly going to do with all of the cash pouring in from pre-order book sales?

How is it possible that I can be so happy with this money as opposed to that money?

Sure, it’s not like I was a professional assassin and sometimes when I was paid to take out the vice president of sales of a large manufacturer so the competition could move into the country with a new product launch, that I felt bad about accepting the suitcases of bills. It wasn’t like that at all. No. I liked my job before. I just can’t remember what it was that I did.

But now. Now is a different story.

Now I created something from nothing. It was blank and I wrote words in it. It was empty and I filled it. Then, and this is the crazy part, I set up an advertisement (we abbreviate that to “ad” in the biz) that ran on an online platform, someone saw that ad, and bought my book. So, so crazy. I know.

But back to the cash.

Let me bring up the chart that shows the income. I’ll probably have to shrink down the dimensions of the table because it just seems to go on forever and ever with numbers everywhere. I’ll zoom in on the relevant parts and I’ll banish any desire I have to talk high-level financial terminology so you can join in and possibly understand how these machinations play out.

Total sales are brutto, not netto. So we’d need to subtract costs or the “spend.” That’s all covered in the full workshop.

So let me get out my calculator: that’s $2.99 minus $0.55 = $2.44. No, wait, that’s not right. I don’t get $2.99. It’s 75% of $2.99. Let’s see, that’s $2.24. Now I suppose I have to reduce the $2.24 by the $0.55 cost of the 4 clicks at $0.14 per click cost, which would be $2.24 – $0.55 = $1.69.

That means, if I knew how to withdraw it, I could have $1.69 in my pocket. It’s as good as mine. It’s as good as in my pocket. Except that it’s not really in my pocket just yet.

But anyway. Following along with what the interviewers were clamoring for before I had to close the automated gates on the east wing of my writer’s compound, let’s get to the question most pressing at this juncture:

Just what am I going to do with all of that cash?

I’ll tell you what the stockholders want me to do–and they’d be right. But that’s just the kind of business genius that I am: I’d reinvest it in more ads.

There, I said it. I know. Probably sacrilege, but it’s truly what I should do.

I’m not going to do it, though. Not just yet. The second wave of $1.69 that comes in, for that, I’ll re-invest. Of course, if the cost per click goes down, I might have to install a levy to control the flooding. I might look into that as a precautionary investment.

I now don’t live where there are dollars. We have Euros here. Hmm, the Euro is as 1.2 today (so 1 Euro = $1.20) which would bring my total intake to €1.41.

I don’t know if I should spend it all in one place, but I think that would be appropriately momentous for the occasion. I’m heading into town the day after tomorrow, I’ll find a way to get the funds distributed and transported by armored vehicle and I’ll shop around for something memorable in Utrecht.

So, I’ve got that going for me.

By the way, on a technicality … cash doesn’t pour in from pre-order sales because they’re pre-order and the sale doesn’t come in until publication date, but hey, don’t burst my bubble — the bubble of imagination and make-believe that I call home.